Bestwick: Falcons organization responsible for Vick

Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2007

Why am I not surprised with where we are in the Michael Vick case now? It was so evident when reports started coming out about "dog fights" that even if Vick had not been directly involved in the actual fighting of the dogs, his money would have had to have been involved. Without the celebrity of Vick, however, what might have been a front-page story in the Suffolk News-Herald, and a back page story in the rest of the media in this country, has become a national calamity in the eyes of the media.

Prior to this, I don't recall ever having read or heard anything about dogfighting. Celebrity might be nice at some level, but it surely exacts a price when there is any taint of scandal attached to it.

Although the actions of Vick and his crew were reprehensible at best and criminal in most states (but not Georgia) at worst, they are somewhere way down the line of things that most people would consider matters of serious national concern. Right off the top of my head: Iraq, terror, border security, poverty, national health care, education, spousal abuse, child abuse, immigration, deficit spending and political skullduggery rank far above most people's concern about dogfighting, sick as it might be.

While condemning Vick and his crew, however, animal rights defenders also should acknowledge that his celebrity has generated the kind of publicity for their organizations that they could never have gotten by their own efforts. My guess would be that the publicity this has generated has been a boon to fundraising efforts for their very worthy cause. Perhaps that is the one good thing that will come out of this fiasco.

A second positive outcome might be the realization that NFL teams and the league itself should do a better job of preparing the young men entering professional football to cope with the change in their lifestyles, as they are going to be on their own for the first time with a lot of money in their pockets. Certainly, in Vick's case, it was obvious early on that he was not a great decision-maker and was prone to immature behavior. There were enough danger signals out there that a reasonable person might have thought the Falcons would have taken safeguards to ensure this kind of situation would never have developed.

Now, however, the Falcons organization seems to want to quickly disown someone they previously called "their savior," "a really good person," "almost like a son." It troubles me when people embrace someone in good times and are the first to desert them in times of trouble. Did the Falcons just now find out Vick grew up in a single-parent home, lived in a housing project on the wrong side of Newport News in an area called Bad Newz, and whose closest associates were longtime buddies he referred to as "the crew." Surely they knew this all the time, yet they didn't think it necessary to step in and provide counsel to a newly rich 21-year-old, and give him some "hands-on" guidance to help him overcome a background from which too many people end up dead or in prison.

Having failed to do the job they should have done when they first signed Vick, you would have hoped the Falcons might have provided more help with "damage control." Yes, I know he lied to his coaches, owner and his teammates, but given his past behavior, would you not have anticipated that was a possibility? The fact the whole issue only was possible with Vick's financial backing should have put the organization in a defense mode from the start.

As I've said before, a quick confession from Vick that he had done something gross and stupid, and a sincere apology for that behavior, would have taken some of the sting out of the charges. Accompanying that with the announcement, supported by the team, that he was going to take a year off from playing, donate his salary for that year to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States, and would be assigned community service working at a dog pound, would at least have demonstrated some sense of remorse on Vick's part. As a Christian nation, we are well known for our ability to forgive people, and a start like this would have given that process some momentum, and would have given Vick a chance to try to redeem himself.

As for his lying, he is much like many others I've encountered in over a half-century of dealing with people. Some people basically are dishonest and their lying is done to allow them to take advantage of someone else. Vick's lying is what I refer to as "ego-lying." There are two kinds of "ego-lying," the first being a lie to make yourself look better than you really are, the second a lie told to cover something up that you are ashamed of. Neither one of these lies are meant to harm the people they are told to, but they certainly can cause a lot of problems to the people who tell them. Vick is one of the second group.

On a final note, the Falcons should be forced to keep Vick on their team. They are responsible for helping shape who he is, and they should get a second chance to give Vick a second chance. As a suggestion, they should forget playing him at quarterback, restructure his contract and make an H-back out of him. Then he can really show us how much he wants to redeem himself.

 Bestwick is a former collegiate football coach and former University of Georgia senior athletic director.